Ministry of Health announced to postpone hospital fee increase to 2016

According to the initial plan of the Ministry of Health, the adjustment of hospital fees will be implemented in late 2015 and early 2016.

According to Mr. Nam Lien, the time to implement this will now be moved to 2016. The planned roadmap will be implemented for people with health insurance cards first, and for people without health insurance cards later.

Analyzing the reason for the delay in applying the adjustment to increase hospital fees, Mr. Nguyen Nam Lien pointed out that the temporary delay in increasing hospital fees is to help the Ministry of Health and relevant agencies have more time to edit the hospital fee collection software.

Mr. Lien said: “Recently, the Ministry of Health has worked with hospitals and found that the current difficulty is that it will have to be implemented for people with health insurance cards first and those without health insurance cards later. Thus, hospitals perform the same service at the same time but have two prices, so there must be very accurate software to avoid unnecessary confusion.”

According to Mr. Lien, another reason is that there are still many people who have not participated in health insurance. With this extension, they will have more time to understand the health insurance policy and have time to participate in health insurance. Because people participate in health insurance today, they will not be able to enjoy it tomorrow but after a certain period of time.

People wait their turn to see a doctor. (Source: VNA)

According to information from the Ministry of Health, those who participate in health insurance will be supported by the state budget. Currently, in more than 10 provinces, the rate of people participating in health insurance is less than 60% of the population and those who do not have insurance will face difficulties when applying new hospital fees to the group paying directly. Therefore, people must increase their participation in health insurance.

Decree No. 16/2015/ND-CP issued by the Government on February 14, 2015 stipulates the roadmap for adjusting medical service prices, which stipulates the roadmap for correctly and fully calculating public service prices in three stages.

The most recent stage is until 2016, fully calculate salary costs, direct costs; The second stage until 2018, fully calculate salary costs, direct costs, management costs and fixed asset depreciation costs; The third stage until 2020, fully calculate salary costs, direct costs, management costs and fixed asset depreciation costs.

Therefore, the joint ministries are building a circular on adjusting service prices to unify hospitals of the same rank nationwide with 1,800 service prices, mainly adjusting medical examination fees and bed fees that will be classified into different disease categories.

According to VIETNAM+